Comprehension of Familiar and Unfamiliar Native Accents Under Adverse Listening Conditions

This study aimed to determine the relative processing cost associated with comprehension of an unfamiliar native accent under adverse listening conditions. Two sentence verification experiments were conducted in which listeners heard sentences at various signal-to-noise ratios. In Experiment 1, thes...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance 2009-04, Vol.35 (2), p.520-529
Main Authors: Adank, Patti, Evans, Bronwen G, Stuart-Smith, Jane, Scott, Sophie K
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accent
Adult
Analysis of Variance
Auditory Perception
Biological and medical sciences
Cognition & reasoning
Comprehension
Dialects
Experimental Psychology
Experiments
Familiarity
Female
Field Dependence-Independence
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Human
Humans
Language
Language Processing
Listeners
Listening
Listening Comprehension
Male
Native Language
Native Speakers
Noise
Perceptual Masking
Phonetics
Production and perception of spoken language
Pronunciation
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Recognition (Psychology)
Reference Values
Sentences
Speech Discrimination Tests
Speech Intelligibility
Speech Perception
Verification
Young Adult
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Summary:This study aimed to determine the relative processing cost associated with comprehension of an unfamiliar native accent under adverse listening conditions. Two sentence verification experiments were conducted in which listeners heard sentences at various signal-to-noise ratios. In Experiment 1, these sentences were spoken in a familiar or an unfamiliar native accent or in two familiar native accents. In Experiment 2, they were spoken in a familiar or unfamiliar native accent or in a nonnative accent. The results indicated that the differences between the native accents influenced the speed of language processing under adverse listening conditions and that this processing speed was modulated by the relative familiarity of the listener with the native accent. Furthermore, the results showed that the processing cost associated with the nonnative accent was larger than for the unfamiliar native accent.
ISSN:0096-1523
1939-1277
DOI:10.1037/a0013552